Catuvellaunia and Rome: Economic and Political Relations during the Final Decades Pre-conquest: The Role of Grain from Southeastern Britain and Its ... Military along the Frontier on the Rhine

This study brings together the numismatic, textual, and archaeological evidence required to discuss potential economic collaboration between the powerful Roman client-kingdom of Catuvellaunia in southeastern Britain and the growing Roman military presence in northern Gaul during the decades before the Claudian conquest of Britain in AD 43 and the inevitable full annexation of Catuvellaunia by Rome as Britannia, a strategic asset. The main theme of the study centres on the grain-wealth of intensively cultivated productive chalk-land in southern Britain and the potential for its ready export to fulfil the growing needs of the military in northern Gaul, a damaged war-zone already limited in its agricultural productivity, during the decades BC-AD. Context for the study is provided by a series of related case-studies:- discussion of climatic conditions, agrarian systems, and models of grain production-consumption set the basic agri-economic parameters;- the logistics and problems of managin